So I fully intended for last week to be my glorious blog return, but then work started kicking my ass again, basically sucking away all of my fucking free time.

I remember when work was work and it stayed at the office, and home was home and you got to do whatever the hell you wanted, and never did the two meet. And while working from home most the time is a pretty sweet deal, please believe me when I say it also has its drawbacks.

Pro: The cats sleep on my desk and otherwise add some levity to my day (when they aren’t pooing where they shouldn’t be, that is).
Con: I essentially am working ALL THE FUCKING TIME.

Pro: I don’t have to worry about looking busy when I have nothing to do.
Con: I essentially am working ALL THE FUCKING TIME.

All I’m saying is, I’d like my free time back, thanks. Or a raise. More money will make up for my sleep deprivation and general increased crankiness. I always said I could never create time to make up for the Space Crew’s idiocy, but it’s starting to feel like that’s what I’m doing.

So, anyway, bear with me if my posts are a bit scarce. I have no intentions of abandoning the blog, as I enjoy myself a good rant. Work is just seeping into every crevice of my life right now (even my blog, gah!). But someday I’ll reclaim my free time, and then my rants will resound off the walls of the Internet once again.

In the meantime, you’ll have to deal with my sporadic rants. I have some good ones saved up, though, so when I get a chance to really make a post, there’s some hilarity in store.

But right now I’m working, at the real job I get paid (not enough) to do.

There’s nothing better than coming home from a full day of work only to have to do more office work at home.

…

Oh wait, I can think of about a million better things. Such as being attacked by wild coyotes or a swarm of angry bees.

But such is the nature of the work I do, and I have to admit my work doesn’t follow me home very often, thankfully. But it does often enough that it’s an annoyance, that’s for sure. Especially since I have to deal with the same idiots I have to deal with in the office. So even though I’m at home, a place where I should be able to relax, I still have to talk on the phone with the people I work with and settle whatever the problem is, and of course that makes me rage.

This just happened to me the other day:

Me: So, is this going to be changed?
Space Cadet*: No, it’s good as it is.
Me: Okay, excellent. Thanks. ::Gets off the phone, e-mails the document to the people who need it, gets ready to relax::
Space Cadet: LAWLZ JUST KIDDING, HERE IS AN UPDATE FOR THE THING I JUST TOLD YOU DOESN’T NEED UPDATES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Me: >:|

When I was on the phone with Space Cadet, they couldn’t just tell me they weren’t sure if there was going to be a change or not? Or to wait ten minutes to see? Shit like this happens with this person all the time, so I already am primed to be pissed off just knowing I have to deal with Space Cadet. I can’t tell you the number of times we’re on the phone or e-mailing about an issue and Space Cadet will tell me everything’s good to go, and then ten minutes or an hour or three hours later I get an e-mail asking if it’s too late to make changes to that thing that Space Cadet said wouldn’t need to be changed. MOST the time it isn’t too late. But the other issue is that Space Cadet doesn’t seem to know our deadlines very well, or doesn’t care about them, and sometimes the requests come in too late, and it makes me want to shrivel up and die, or stab something. Because if I knew that changes might be coming, I could have held off on sending the files, and then there would still be slight annoyance for me but not for anyone else and no actual major issues. The files are supposed to be DONE when I send them to the next person. I’m not supposed to be sending along 8,760,783,416 more changes (that’s a rough estimate).

On top of that, there are also times when I’ll be sitting around waiting for Space Cadet to get back to me on a question. And I sit. And I wait. And I sit and I wait some more. Last week, I waited four hours for the answer to one question, and when Space Cadet got back to me, their answer was “I don’t know.” THANKS FOR MAKING ME WAIT FOUR FUCKING HOURS FOR THAT INSIGHT, ASSHOLE. I was sitting around here waiting for your reply because you’re supposed to be the one who knows the answer to this type of question, or at least knows how to get the answer, and your fucking reply after FOUR HOURS of silence is I don’t know. Really? Why don’t we try that again, bucko. This time, remember to activate your brain first.

So really, the last thing I want to do after leaving the office for the day is come home and deal with these people again. But it happens, and they always find a way to make it adventurous. And I’m only talking about Space Cadet in this rant, but don’t worry, there are plenty other annoying co-workers on the Space Crew. I’ll have to start coming up with alias names for all of them, I guess. Back to Space Cadet, though, you would think that if I’m already working from home to accommodate their lackadaisical attitude, the least they (and other members of the Space Crew) could do is make sure that when I get the files, they are ready for me to do my job. BUT NO. Aside from cruising right past deadlines without a second glance, they also send me incomplete files, so I’m STILL WAITING for them to get their shit together while it’s taking more and more of my evening away from what I want to be doing. BECAUSE GUESS WHAT? I GET TO WAKE UP AND GO TO THE OFFICE AND DO THIS ALL AGAIN TOMORROW TOO! I need at least eight hours to myself before having to deal with the Space Crew again, thanks.

Let me clarify something: Not all of the people I work with drive me crazy. Awesomesauce Boss is great, and is always trying to make up for Space Cadet being, well, spacey (and kind of an asshole to boot). But poor Awesomesauce Boss can only do so much single-handedly, and unfortunately we are outnumbered by the Space Crew and are often helpless against their ability to have total disregard for everyone else’s schedules. Breaking news: There are only 24 hours in a day! I cannot magically make more time appear, so when things are sent to me hours past your deadline, that gives me less time to get them ready for my deadline. I don’t know if you realize, but that is how time works. Once an hour is gone, it is gone forever. You cannot get it back and you cannot create a new hour to replace the one you wasted with your thumb up your butt.

If I didn’t work with the Space Crew, I think my life would be 75% less stressful.

But then I wouldn’t have anything to rant about.

Okay, that’s a lie. I’d find plenty of other things to rant about. But it’d be nice to reduce my work-related stress.